Canal Boys, Plumed Knights and Gold Bugs

We have a fun selection of items dating from the final decades of the 19th century, 1880 to 1900, with material from the campaigns of Garfield and Hancock, Cleveland, Blaine and Harrison, and William McKinley. It was, in the always apposite words of the late Ed Sullivan, an era of "badges, bright and flamboyant." Here are a few such badges.